The twenty-first century will be political or it will not be. With its fourth production, Ma vie sur les murs, Dorliss & Compagnie presents a dizzying prison chamber drama.
For its previous play, Dorliss & Compagnie successfully explored collective writing. This time it has chosen a single author’s text. The author is Michel Meyer, a specialist in ideologies of revolt, whom Anne-Laure Walger-Mossière asked to devise a story about political commitment and individual responsibility.
The story unfolds in an unspecified future whose dictatorial tendencies and neoliberal outlines are apparent. A young woman, Claire, is arrested for slashing advertisements. In prison she meets a mysterious guard who seems to assume every role: warder and judge, lawyer and executioner. Between violence and tenderness, an ambiguous relationship soon [the end of this sentence is cut off in the scan] while the charges become increasingly serious…
“There is also a critique of the fantasy of the romantic terrorist in the play.”
With this fourth production, Anne-Laure Walger-Mossière wanted to address teenagers first and foremost. “There are two ways of viewing the text: I was very keen to ask young people about political commitment, but the play also criticises the fantasy of the romantic terrorist,” the director explains.
As in the best speculative fiction—Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury—and Camus’s Les Justes, nothing is certain. What if Claire had been manipulated by the organisation to which she belongs? Does the guard really obey the authorities? [A portion of the sentence is missing.] These questions soon raise others relating to urgent current issues, such as the controversy over releasing former Action directe members. Should people answer for their actions or their ideology?
For this oppressive chamber drama, Anne-Laure Walger-Mossière called on young actress Margaux Céréja and Isabelle Ruiz, seen in her previous production Style Genre. The set is by Elena Costelian, a graduate of Strasbourg’s decorative arts school. The score was specially composed by young Italian composer Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi, one of electroacoustic music’s rising stars.
Jean-Michel Lahire
7 November, 2.30 p.m. and 8 p.m.; 8 November, 8 p.m., Espace Tival, Kingersheim. Photo: Philip Anstett.